House to debate role of local school boards

Sunday

BATON ROUGE — Get a job as a school superintendent in Louisiana and you are likely to get a refresher course in math, said James Easton.

“If you have a nine-member board, the first thing you’re told is, ‘You’re going to learn how to count to five,’ ” said Easton, former superintendent of Lafayette schools.

BATON ROUGE — Get a job as a school superintendent in Louisiana and you are likely to get a refresher course in math, said James Easton.

“If you have a nine-member board, the first thing you’re told is, ‘You’re going to learn how to count to five,’ ” said Easton, former superintendent of Lafayette schools.

School-board members’ power to fire superintendents with a simple majority vote is under fire itself: the House takes up a bill this week that would require a two-thirds vote of a local school board to prematurely end a superintendent’s contract. The measure also would beef up state law that already says school-board members are not supposed to “compel or coerce any personnel decision.”

Rep. Steve Carter, R-Baton Rouge, is pushing the bill as a means of ending what he and others are calling “micromanagement” of school systems by school-board members whose influence often exceeds what Carter said is their legal responsibility to set district policy and let the superintendent manage.

Multiple school boards throughout the state — including those in Terrebonne and Lafourche — have come out in opposition to the bill.

“Certain individuals are trying to take control away from the voices of the people that are here locally,” Gregory Harding, vice president of the Terrebonne School Board, has said. “We have a good system here. ... If it’s not broken, why are you trying to fix it?”

Backers of the bill include the Council for a Better Louisiana, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, state Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek and Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Easton said board members’ interference with his decisions was constant during his more than six years as Lafayette’s superintendent.

“I wasn’t intimidated by it, but it was a nuisance,” he said.

Former Jefferson Parish Schools superintendent Barbara Turner agrees.

“I found it extremely difficult to baby-sit adults all day,” Turner said of her decision to leave the job in 1994 after two years.

Complaints aren’t limited to former superintendents. A letter that Calcasieu Parish School Board member William Jongbloed sent to the state’s education chief has become a rallying point for supporters of Carter’s bill. Jongbloed’s letter lists 10 complaints about school board members he has encountered during 30 years working in education as a teacher, administrator and board member.

Offenses outlined by Jongbloed include the time a superintendent’s contract renewal failed on an 8-7 vote after he refused to fire a principal who was married to a board member’s political opponent; the time a superintendent with a contract renewal pending gave in to a board member’s demands that a certain football coach be hired, and the time a board member, who felt his granddaughter wasn’t getting enough playing time on a school softball team, tried to have the coach fired.

Lloyd Dressel, director of business for the Louisiana School Boards’ Association, doesn’t deny that micromanagement exists — in school systems or any other aspect of government or business. However, he says, the LSBA questions whether school board members are, through the legislation, being singled out as the cause for Louisiana’s low national education rankings.

“We personally don’t think the answers are going to be with school-board management,” Dressel said. “We question whether there’s any statistics to show that so-called micromanagement affects performance. As of yet, they haven’t shown a correlation. I think that’s a big argument with a lot of the legislators: show us a correlation where micromanagement of boards has adversely affected performance.”

Opponents of the bill also say that it comes close to criminalizing responsible behavior, such as a school-board member making a reasonable suggestion that someone be considered for a job. The bill adds the words “interfere with” to the “compel and coerce” language and it adds language specifically reserving the right to hire teachers and other school personnel to superintendents.

Opponents also object to the bill because they say it diminishes the authority of officials elected at the local level.

Pointing to anecdotal evidence, Pastorek and backers of the bill say micromanagement is an obvious problem. At a recent committee hearing, Pastorek said that board members who are doing their jobs have nothing to fear from the legislation. “If a school board is not involved in micromanagement, this bill will not affect them,” he said.

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